Manila is doing too little to stop the unchecked killings of the country's activists

11/21/2006 08:33:00 PM

Ruby Sison is waiting for someone to kill her. I met Sison a few months ago at a cemetery in Kidapawan, a town on the lawless Philippine island of Mindanao. We were paying our respects to the activists and journalists George and Maricel Vigo, who were shot dead in June in broad daylight by motorbike-riding assassins while returning home to their five children. The killers were still at large, and local reporters were braving multiple death threats by keeping the Vigo murders in the news. A friend and left-wing activist, Sison had heard that a hit man had already received a down payment to kill her. "The rest will be paid when I'm dead," she told me. Read more from Time Asia.

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    Democracy, according to the late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, is "a question of human dignity, [a]nd human dignity is political freedom, the right to freely express opinion and the right to be allowed to criticise and form opinions."

    But exercising political freedom in the Philippines, which purports itself to be a democracy, can lead to death. Since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the presidency of the country in 2001, more than 800 Filipinos murdered in politically-motivated, extra-judicial, targeted killings. Since the 4th quarter of July 2005, one person has been killed every two days. The victims of these brazen acts of violence were all unarmed citizens: lawyers, judges, journalists, medical practitioners, members of cause-oriented groups, priests, church-workers, human rights advocates, laborers and farmers.

    It is widely believed—and the United Nations support this belief—that state security forces are complicit in these crimes.